The Extinction of Menai by Chuma Nwokolo

Author:Chuma Nwokolo [Nwokolo, Chuma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2018-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

Notes from the National Historian

Nigeria Archives, Abuja

15th April, 2005

A man in his mid-twenties, matching the description of the wanted vigilante Badu, was arrested by airport security on the 15th of April, 2005, upon debarking from an international flight into Lagos. He was travelling under an assumed name. He was easily identified by the ‘Wanted’ posters displayed in the airport building.

Log Two

SLEEPCATASTROPHES

Kreektown | June/July, 2003

Namalie Kama

Dede Orando

Emini Barde

Sama Adeda

Births

Nil

Extant Menai population: 120 (NPC estimates)

GABRIEL IDOWU

The Presidential Jet | 16th April, 2005

The president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was crying, and his special assistant for protocol was not very happy about it. They were in the presidential jet on the last hour of a marathon flight to New York. The president had spent thirty minutes on his position paper for the meeting with President Bush, forty minutes on a telephone call to his daughter, and the last half hour on a magazine that was now causing him, surreptitiously, to dab his eye with a fold of his resplendent purple robe.

Dr. Idowu did not like that. Only the tough got anything from the cowboy in the White House. He wanted his president in a hard-hitting and savvy frame of mind, not in a soppy and sentimental one. He wondered how the dodgy-looking Balding Wolf magazine had found its way into the presidential space. It was not like Mr. President had walked past any newsstands lately. All it would take to start a scandal about the presidential hairline was a photograph of him reading the magazine.

Idowu picked up his copy of the position paper, circled a passage at random, and crossed the aisle. ‘Your Excellency, sir,’ he began.

‘I want a national award for this writer.’

‘Sir?’ Idowu was flabbergasted.

‘This man, he got it completely. Did you read his speech at the House of Commons? I want an honorary national award for him. Put him on the list.’

Idowu took the magazine proffered by his boss. He was still seething at the list Oga had sent down: he had suggested eight of his people and five had been bumped off. Idowu was scheming to revisit the list. ‘He is Chinese!’

‘Is that not amazing?’ said the president, pressing the service bell. ‘My own writers are disturbing me for contracts, and look at that: a Chinese! This story is the best memorial for those Menai people—may their souls rest in peace. What do you think?’

‘An excellent idea, Your Excellency,’ began Idowu cautiously, because the best way to antagonise Oga was to tell him his ideas were harebrained, ‘although, of course, these Chinese . . . the politics of it . . .’

‘What politics?’

‘Well, you know . . .’ Idowu floundered, but he was a history PhD, and even when he was floundering he still impressed. ‘He might reject the award for political reasons . . . like Benjamin Zephaniah rejected the Queen’s O.B.E. That would be quite embarrassing for Mr. President . . .’

‘Tea,’ said the president to his hostess. To his aide he made a face. ‘That was a colonial O.

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